At Home, part 17

February was the time for my friend Eileen to pay me a visit. She had been so wonderful six months earlier, shoring up my courage to make the move to Spain, making a special trip to say goodbye, and telling Mike that he’d better take it easy on me. Part of her wonderfulness had been her promise to visit—soon—and she had decided to come without her husband and kids, to make it a “just girls” trip.

Eileen was a good, experienced traveler who had an eye for luxury. She’d spent part of her honeymoon in an English castle; her trip to Tokyo had included the purchase of a perfect strand of Mikimoto pearls. “You have to find me something to buy that will be the ultimate souvenir of Spain,” she had said, so I had taken on that challenge.

There were a couple of young American women working on assignments at Price Waterhouse in Madrid, and when I told them about Eileen’s request, they had a suggestion ready. “There’s a place where you can get a made-to-measure leather coat or jacket for a great price,” they told me. “It’s top quality stuff, and you can get any style you like.”

This sounded just right to me, but I knew Eileen had only a few days to spend in Madrid, and I didn’t know if that was long enough to have a coat made. So I scouted out the store—CC3 was its name—and spoke to the lady in charge.

“Sí, sí,” she said. “We can do it. She has to come for measurements, then again two days later for a fitting. Two more days and the coat will be ready.”

So when I picked Eileen up at the airport I told her we were going right to CC3—no stops, no naps, no snacks. “Sounds perfect to me!” she said.

I decided that I would have a coat made, too, and the two of us enjoyed looking at the styles in the store and putting our choices together—this kind of leather, that sort of collar, the cuffs from a different jacket. I ordered a long black coat with a stand-up collar and slightly puffy sleeves with a banded cuff. Eileen got a long brown leather coat with lapels and straight sleeves. “Her coat is a rush,” I reminded the manager, “but you can take your time with mine.”

I allowed Eileen to have some lunch before we drove back to Pozuelo, and she managed to stay awake to see Julie and Lisa when they got home from school. There were squeals and hugs all around, because the kids knew that Eileen was one of those fun people—it was always lively and interesting when she was around. She teased and joked with them, and it was a while before they were willing to let her have a well-deserved nap.

We waited for Mike to get home for dinner, and then we started to make plans for Eileen and me for the next day. “I want to drive up to Segovia,” I told him.

“Why don’t you try the other route?” he asked. My previous trips to Segovia had been via a tunnel through a mountain, but I knew there was an over-mountain road that was supposed to be lovely.

“Good idea,” I said. “Sound okay to you, Eileen?”

“Sounds great!” she said. “I’m up for anything.”

The next morning we set out early for Segovia, about 90 minutes away. It was chilly in Pozuelo, but I didn’t realize how much colder it would be in the Guadarrama Mountains—nor did it occur to me that it might be snowing.

The mountain road was beautiful, with its steep incline and twisting switchbacks. One moment we were in a pine forest, and the next we were on the crest of a foothill with a beautiful view. And when the first few flakes began to fall on us, it was enchanting.

But the sky became grayer, and the pavement became slick. My Alfa did not have snow tires—in Madrid it sometimes snows, but the snow never sticks—and the picturesque twists and turns of the road became treacherous exercises in first-gear speed management. We white-knuckled it through the drive, which was longer than we’d expected because we had to go so slowly.

“Good driving, Suse,” Eileen complimented me when it was clear we’d lived through the worst of it.

“Thanks,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Fortunately, we were able to relax and enjoy the charms of Segovia—the aqueduct, the cathedral, the castle—because we knew we didn’t have to return home via the mountain road. We took the nice, safe tunnel route instead.